Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Intro to Fiction

Hey everyone! Since I have been writing so much for my intro to fiction class, I figured I should post some of my stories for everyone to read.

This story is my homework on plot.

Alive Alive

The damp chill of the night crept down the back of my neck, the heavy fog clinging to my skin. Theo crouched next to me, muttering curses under his breath as he squinted into the mist. The brick wall of the mausoleum rose at our backs, the ivy dripping with condensation.

One wish was all it took. It only took one idiot’s desire to do something no one had ever done before. That wish had turned the world upside down, made inside outside and light into darkness and things that should have stayed in the darkness were brought into the light. It sounds so melodramatic, but I just have to say it. The dead walked the earth.

That is so much fun to say. It’s just too bad that the zombies that resulted from that lab disaster at the University weren’t more like the ones from the old movies. It would be so easy if the undead were slow, with no sense of self-preservation, a mindless, rotting hoard of shambling moaning corpses driven only by their hunger for delicious brain-meat. It’s really too bad that only one of those is true.

I shifted uncomfortably, cold water starting to drip down my back. Theo glared, and I stopped moving. I hadn’t been making that much noise, but in a cemetery on a foggy night hunting zombies, it is infinitely better to make no sound at all. The clock-tower bell began to chime. Clichéd? Yes, but that doesn’t make it any less terrifying when it is you, rather than a character in a movie.

Theo moved, slowly raising the long metal pipe at his side. I peered desperately around us, more than a little distraught that I hadn’t yet spotted the threat. Following the line of Theo’s pipe, I could only see a faint outline of a darker shape. I knew the shape belonged to one of those old memorial gravestones; a stone angel perched on the top. Still, if Theo saw something, then I trusted him.

He turned his head slightly to glare at me. I was taking way too long. My fingers only shaking a little bit, I flipped the switch on the remote control in my pocket. Suddenly, a light blazed through the fog, the light of a flashlight propped against a mound of discarded earth. Faster than my eyes could follow, a dark figure detached itself from the crying angel statue and darted towards the light. The most frightening thing was how silent it was, all sound in the world muffled in the fog. As the thing reached the flashlight, it stumbled forward, its legs giving out beneath it. With a barely audible thud, it collapsed twitching to the ground. I barely held back a whistle of admiration. Theo had gotten very good with that blowgun in the last couple of weeks. Not to mention the fact that any firearm would have alerted everything in the area to our presence.

I turned to smile at Theo and nearly screamed. Theo wasn’t there anymore; at least, not most of him. Above us stood a man in a white suit smudged with dirt, an unnatural grin stretching his face.